was a drum, and my heart a drum-stick that beat a double tattoo with as much ease as though it had been two.
I ceased alike entreaties and defiance. There were no more observations to be made. I would not speak to the inhabitants of my own world, though the vertebra parted, and each hair turned white where it stood. I got into my bed with a desperate determination to remain there, and I remained till morning.
Morning came. There was nothing at the windows, nothing at the door, on the furniture, behind the furniture, under the bed— nothing in the pitcher, the basin—nothing anywhere.
I struck against the porcelain foot-bath, unstumbled against and unremembered the night before, and screamed—in a voice that brought the household to my threshold—over a half -grown, half-drowned rat, that was swish, swishing with its wretched little claws up the concave side of the slippery ware and sliding back into its unwished-for bath of ten inches of cold and mustardy water.
I screamed, but it was morning. My reputation for courage was lost, but no one of that household has known of cause to accuse me of superstition unto this day.
